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A health adviser to the Labour government has said the long-term sick must be forced to look for jobs to cut welfare costs and reduce the UK’s reliance on immigration.
Former health secretary Alan Milburn, who has been brought in by the party to advise on NHS reform, said seven in 10 economically inactive people want to work but few are required to or have the help to do so.
He called for fundamental reform of a “crazy” system.
Ms Milburn presented a report alongside work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall which said getting people back into work was “the only route to higher levels of economic growth”.
Ms Kendall acknowledged that addressing long-term sickness is key to Sir Keir Starmer’s mission to boost economic growth and promised to address spiralling economic inactivity.
According to a report in The Times, Ms Kendall praised Mr Milburn’s report, but stopped short of backing his plan to impose conditions on sickness benefits.
She said: “There have always been conditions to look for work and consequences if you don’t, that won’t change. But I want to see a much greater focus on that upfront help and support.
“I think we’ve had too much of a focus on [clampdowns] rather than the help and support people really need to get into work.”
Of the 9.4m people not in work or looking for a job, 2.8m are off work due to long-term sickness, Office for National Statistics figures show.
It is driving a huge increase in the benefits bill, which is expected to have almost doubled to £64bn by the end of the year compared with pre-Covid levels.
In her first major speech since taking over the department in Barnsley, Ms Kendall said: “Under my political leadership, the DWP will shift from being a department for welfare to being a department for work.”
She said the current system is “both too siloed and too centralised” and that “the Conservatives put political point-scoring ahead of solving problems”.
She said: “Their divisive rhetoric about strivers versus scroungers or claiming people just felt ‘too bluesy’ to work may have grabbed headlines, but it did absolutely nothing to actually get Britain working again.
“As today’s report rightly concludes, people who are economically inactive are not one single group. There will be a few who act fraudulently, others who say they can’t work but who can.
“But the vast majority face a complex range of barriers which stop them from getting what both they and policymakers want – a pathway into paid employment
She said job seekers will still be obligated to engage with support, look for work, and take jobs when they are offered.
But she said more attention would also be paid to wider issues – such as health, skills, childcare and transport – that play a role in determining whether people can get work, stay in work and succeed in their work.
Labour’s goal to reach an 80 per cent employment rate would currently mean getting 2 million more people back into work, she said.
The plans include an overhaul of job centres to create a careers service that merges JobCentre Plus and the National Careers Service as well as a “youth guarantee” to offer training to 18- to 21-year-olds.
