Ahead of the Green Paper on welfare reform, I have been taking a look at a few ministerial speeches on the subject over the past year.
In the process, I was reminded that we had three Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions last year: Alan Johnson, David Blunkett and John Hutton. No wonder this Green Paper has been somewhat delayed. But they have all said rather similar things - much of which I have agreed with. The trouble, I fear, is that they will not be very radical in trying to get people back to work. This is only a Green Paper anyway and it seems unlikely that anything radical would be accepted by Labour backbenchers these days.
But here is a particularly interesting part of the attempt to persuade backbenchers that reform is in the interests of many benefit claimants, as well as of taxpayers (which is quite right). It comes from a speech early last year by Alan Johnson:
....there is growing medical evidence that for many conditions working is much healthier than being inactive.Take back pain for example. We used to think that rest was the best response. But now, as Gordon Waddell’s work has shown, rest might actually delay recovery. In contrast, by advising patients to stay active, they can expect a faster recovery and a speedier return to work.
The same is also true for mental health, where periods of unemployment or inactivity can be even more damaging. Suicide rates are 35 times higher among the long-term unemployed than the employed.
One piece of research from the mid-1990s – found that being unemployed has a higher mortality risk than any occupation – even the most dangerous ones. And it stated that – and I quote - “so heightened is the risk of death, that being unemployed is equivalent to smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day!”
What is clear is that failing to help those on Incapacity Benefit who want and expect to get back to work is not just bad for the economy but bad for the people on IB themselves.
The full speech is here.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits
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Silly people sometimes come out with even sillier idea. I mean some minister make a habit of it.
The Tories want more disabled people to work, some disabled people want to work, the only people that do not want anything to do with this idea is the employers.
I have been disabled now for seventeen years, up until the DDA came out I could find work ok it was not great or well paid but it was work, once the DDA came out and disabled people were protected, I could not even get an interview. Time on time I go to an employer and not even get past the security.
I think a lot of disabled people would like to work and I am not talking here about people who are depressed, because I think depression depends on what type how long and if it is real or imagined. But lets say a chap like myself has an accident gets told you will never walk again, thinks to himself well why live why bother, and then takes a Stanley knife and cuts his wrist, thats depression, thats what I did.
I then though OK lets take a Chance lets see what work I can find, well the answerer to that was part time braining numbing work.
I worked lost my benefits ended up living deeper into debt, and the government said yes that OK your not claiming benefits. Then all of a sudden the work dried up because employers had to prove I could not do a job under the DDA, nobody was willing to take the chance and I was out.
So to people who write books about the sick and disabled come down to me and live my life for a year and see how it goes. I went from earning £30,000 a year to keeping a family on £10,000 a year, to now doing the same with two extra grand kids for the grand total of £8,000 a year, disabled is a life term in poverty.
Posted by: Robert at February 9, 2007 07:58 PM
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Lets get something straight bad backs depends on what is wrong with your back, strains and sprains are ok, breaking your back and suffering chronic pain and having fits due to spinal damage is something else. get your facts right and understand the bad back syndome can be serious.
easy saying people with bad backs, this group of injuries can be massive and can mean people will never work again.
Posted by: Robert at September 28, 2006 10:34 AM