Jeremy Hunt to lay out Budget plans to get sick and disabled back to work – Parents and older workers will also be targeted as part of UK chancellor’s push to tackle inactivity and drive growth
Jeremy Hunt to lay out Budget plans to get sick and disabled back to work – Parents and older workers will also be targeted as part of UK chancellor’s push to tackle inactivity and drive growth
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**Jeremy Hunt to lay out Budget plans to get sick and disabled back to work**
*Parents and older workers will also be targeted as part of UK chancellor’s push to tackle inactivity and drive growth*
The UK chancellor will lay out his ambition to get hundreds of thousands more people into work in next week’s Budget, introducing reforms intended to move the sick, disabled, parents and older workers back into jobs.
Inactivity is set to be a big focus of Jeremy Hunt’s March 15 Budget, although critics will question whether his patchwork of changes will significantly alter the dynamics in Britain’s tight labour market.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, which scores government policies in terms of their potential to raise growth, is expected to be cautious. Former OBR officials say the fiscal watchdog’s approach is “show, don’t tell”.
Under next week’s proposals, benefit claimants will be encouraged to move into work or increase their hours through changes to the universal credit system and increased job support programmes.
An element of coercion, backed by sanctions, will be used, with claimants being asked to attend more regular meetings with work coaches and attend skills boot camps.
The work capability assessment will be scrapped, allowing disabled people to try work without fear of losing their benefits and reducing the number of assessments needed to qualify for health-related benefits.
Childcare costs for people on universal credit will start to be paid up front, rather than in arrears, while the maximum amount people can claim for childcare under the scheme will also be increased by several hundred pounds.
Hunt will also target measures at disabled people, people with chronic health conditions and the over-50s, many of whom left the workforce after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Older workers will be offered “returnerships”, offering flexible skills training that takes into account previous experience, with a further 8,000 “skills boot camp” places to the 56,000 currently on offer.
Hunt said: “Those who can work, should work because independence is always better than dependence. We need to plug the skills gaps and give people the qualifications, support and incentives they need to get into work.
“Through this plan, we can address labour shortages, bring down inflation, and put Britain back on a path to growth.”
However with 1.2mn job vacancies in Britain, ministers privately accept that mobilising inactive workers in the UK will not be enough to fill skills shortages and are looking to foreign workers to help plug the gaps.
The government’s migration advisory committee is carrying out a major review of the jobs market and is next week expected to add construction jobs to the shortage occupations list, allowing employers to bring in foreign workers on lower salaries and with less visa bureaucracy.
The backdrop to the new measures is a big rise in the number of people aged 16-64 who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness.
Around 5.8 per cent of the working age population is inactive, the highest rate in 16 years, according to the Labour Force Survey. The Office for National Statistics has predicted that an ageing population will push up inactivity rates even further over the next three years.
Long-term sickness or disability was the main cause of the unexpected rise in inactivity between 2019 to 2022, the data shows.
The UK has a bigger problem than most comparable nations. All 37 advanced OECD economies experienced an increase in inactivity rates in the first half of 2020 but the UK is part of only 20 per cent that still have higher rates than pre-pandemic, according to the ONS.
Latest figures show that employment is at 75 per cent and unemployment is close to a record low of 3.7 per cent.
“Target” makes it sound like there will be more stick and less carrot in their approach.
Let’s hope that’s not the case.
Some of this, like training schemes and opportunities to do a bit of work without having benefits cut back for some people, is good.
Ultimately, though, there are a lot of people who are legitimately disabled or long term ill in ways which mean they aren’t and shouldn’t rush back the workplace. It seems likely, given past examples, that a push to get people back into work partly through sanctions is likely to hurt some of those people.
This is still the system that made people who were diagnosed with Parkinsons go to their GP for a sick note and take it to the Job Centre every week, after all.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/sickness-benefit-cuts-incentive-work-parkinsons-disease
>Hunt will also target measures at disabled people, people with chronic health conditions and the over-50s, many of whom left the workforce after the Covid-19 pandemic. Older workers will be offered “returnerships”, offering flexible skills training that takes into account previous experience, with a further 8,000 “skills boot camp” places to the 56,000 currently on offer.
I don’t think training is really the problem here. There are people out there that do want to work but they come with health needs that need to be accommodated by their potential employer. If they aren’t accommodated then it’s only going to lead to conflict and a series of warnings and then being fired, why the hell would anyone voluntarily subject themselves to that when they don’t have to?
While some measures are sensible like scrapping the WCA, this government is a pure lunacy.
Corporations boast about record profits, wages have gone down by 4% and at the same time they scream about labour shortage.
When government is going to pressure corporations into paying fair wages rather than forcing people into piss poor paid work?
And the cherry on top:
>expected to add construction jobs to the shortage occupations list, allowing employers to bring in foreign workers on lower salaries and with less visa bureaucracy
Which means downwards pressure on wages, more profit for big corporations and more people competing for already expensive housing and stretching the NHS further.
This is not sustainable.
” expected to add construction jobs to the shortage occupations list, allowing employers to bring in foreign workers on lower salaries and with less visa bureaucracy.”
Government are really trying to suppress wages lol. Who would hire a native when you can just hire foreigners for cheaper?
So they admit now that universal credit and making it “always better off to be in work more” that have harmed thousands of disabled people and driven some to suicide, have been a failure then?
It’s obvious that the Tories believe their own propaganda but there’s no reason why anyone else needs to.
This is not pleasant reading. This is a call to get as many people working as possible even though a on health related benefits.
Granted independence is better then dependence, the case is how many employers will want staff who let’s say suffer from bad health, what protection will the employee have if they’re sick and the sick days pile on?
I hear that timely access to medical professionals and health care is great for getting many sick and disabled people back into work.
The childcare scenario is one that really needs to be looked at
We have the highest childcare costs in europe yet all of our nurseries are running at a deficit and all of the staff are on minimum wage.
As a worker on 30k a year with tax free childcare is still over 1/3 of my wage meanwhile those on universal credit 60% of which do not work can claim £600+ a month for childcare and that’s being upped to £900+
The people out of the universal credit threshold are shafted for higher fees from earlier ages to a point where it makes more financial sense to drop hours at work or just drop work all together
Seemingly rather than supporting that group who work they have opted to focus more support on those on universal credit while saying “Well we can’t help everyone”
Having grown up in Scotland and suffered thatchers evil reign as a youth and on leaving school, I never thought I would say this, but this government is composed of the worst bunch of cunts ever shat into existence.
There are absolutely no positives at all.
If england re elects this lot again then the whole country might as well call it a day
What, exactly, is he expecting the sick and disabled to do exactly?! Furthermore, what employer would want to hire them?
We’ve allowed profiteering to get to the point where half the working population don’t pay tax and discretionary spending has all but stopped
If we don’t get more people into work soon it’s all going to collapse
Yes, we know. We’ve been saying this for a while now
they can hate on unemployed all they want, but until there is an army of employers offering high quality full time work, they will not get the results their desire.
Why is every approach from the Tory’s some big giant stick to make life more miserable for us all
You know when there’s a massive car crash, and the victim has been pulled out of the wreckage, and people are just dragging them about, neck flopping all over the place, with scant regard for neck stabilisation, so now that person is either going to die or be permanently paralysed?
This country is that victim. Its finished. This country is absolutely washed
Yeah get parents, pensioners and the disabled back to work, lazy bastards!
Completely psychotic. What is this, the last days of the Wehrmacht?
“Hey single mother of three. Get back to work” “are you going to pay for my childcare then or pay me a high enough salary to look after my family?” “lol no you fucking pleb”
Yep all those lazy sick and disabled. They would want to just sit on their ass and do nothing…
This makes me want to sign on for UC only to tell them I am taking my private pension early.
I’m just not convinced that driving pensioners and people sick after a once a century pandemic into low paying gig economy jobs is really the slam dunk solution to productivity and low growth that he thinks it is, but that’s why I don’t get paid the big bucks
Something makes me think they’re not encouraging it with free childcare, training, and good pay….
This is all smoke and mirrors to appeal to Daily Mail readers who think all their neighbours are skivers on benefit with big screen TVs snd 16 kids.
They know they’re going to lose badly in the next election because of their failures over Brexit, the NHS, the cost of living etc so they’re putting the blame on asylum seekers and the unemployed.
For all the talk of needing more workers, there simply isn’t enough jobs that pay a living wage and businesses are downsizing because of energy costs and of moving to the EU because of Brexit.
I think the ultimate plan to increase growth is an un-compulsory resignation of every Tory inside this country no matter the colour of the rainbow they belong too.
“Shit – Gary Lineker has made our horseshit about immigration unsuitable for front page leaks about the budget – who else do our base hate irrationally enough to believe any old horseshit? Disabled people? Fuck, it’ll have to do.”
How will forcing the least productive people back to work increase productivity?
I think at this point the tories are in a f*ck it all dash to do as much lasting harm as possible. It’s a classic play of our bipartisan electoral system (there’s a reason they refuse to abandon first past the post, we have tory or tory lite neo lib labour as the only outcomes).
the outgoing party throw a tantrum, trash the economy, trash welfare and the health system along with services badly enough that whomever gets in next has to spend their first term unf*cking it all instead of on their own policies.
Because then these tory gobshites can crow from across the commons “they’ve done nothing to address X manifesto clause since taking government, they lied to you, tories did nothing wrong, vote tory”
And as always you can bet the gormless knuckle draggers of the daily mail and sun army will eat it up
What next? Reanimate the dead to help boost the almighty GDP?
I can 100% guarantee that this plan to get more sick people working will not actually involve any plans to make sick people not sick or unwell anymore
I get that there are some people out there who game the system, for instance I know a woman who cannot work due to heart issues, but she still drinks every weekend and smokes 20 fags a day.
Getting folk like that out the way, I seriously worry about our legitimate disabled people being made to work. I think if it’s done right and introduces part time wfh stuff which will put more money in their pockets and not harm their entitled benefits then I’m all for it. I do also worry how that could affect someone who’s never been able to work, now being forced into some sort of role…how would they manage with that?
Man with net worth of 15 million wants disabled and old people working … ok scrooge mcduck
If only there were some kind of public organization dedicated to keeping people healthy. The government could properly fund it and then maybe more people would be able to work. Is that too crazy of an idea?
Once again showing that the Tories don’t understand sickness or disability