Jeremy Hunt tells people to ‘find a job’ or see their benefits stopped

Jeremy Hunt has once again used his Autumn Statement to clobber benefit claimants in proposals that will ‘punish’ the sick and disabled.

The Chancellor outlined plans in today’s budget to boost social welfare support while rolling out tougher benefits sanctions to get 200,000 people into the workforce.

Around 2,600,000 working-age people are unable to clock in or out altogether due to a serious sickness, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

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Hundreds of thousands of others living with a long-term illness can work but their condition makes what jobs they can do ‘limited’.

To many of them, the chancellor has given them two options: find a job or face a benefit cut.

Hunt said the government will provide a further £1,300,000,000 in funding over the next five years to help 300,000 people who have been unemployed for more than a year and 700,000 people not working due to physical or mental ill health, such as counselling or coaching.

But in Hunt’s bid to reward ‘effort and work’ and ‘improve incentives to work’, the government will ‘ask for something in return’.

Job seekers will have 18 months to find employment before they have to take part in a mandatory work placement ‘to increase their skills and improve their employability’.

People receiving disability benefits will be made to work from home, he said.

‘If they choose not to engage with the work such process for six months. We will close their case and stop their benefits,’ Hunt said. Legal aid and free prescriptions will also be stopped.

‘We will reform the fit note process so that treatment rather than time off work becomes the default,’ he added.

‘We will reform the work capability assessment to reflect greater flexibility and availability of home working after the pandemic.’

Hunt says the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), a spending watchdog, thinks this will get another 200,000 people into the workforce.

‘Conservatives say we should unlock the potential we have right here at home, which we do with the biggest set of welfare reforms in a decade in today’s autumn statement for growth,’ Hunt said.

Scope’s James Taylor said: ‘Threatening disabled people with more sanctions will not lead to more disabled people getting into and staying in work.

‘Forcing disabled people into unsuitable jobs and cutting financial support in a cost of living crisis will be disastrous.’

Joe Ryle, Director of the 4 Day Week Campaign, said that Britain’s work culture isn’t exactly helping with worries about people living with illnesses not working.

‘Our very British culture of long working hours and low pay is pushing people to the brink,’ he said.

‘We work some of the longest hours in Europe which is causing burnout for millions and not producing good results for the economy.’

Changes to the Work Capability Assessment also raised alarms for a coalition of over 100 disability organisations.

Anastasia Berry, policy co-chair of the Disability Benefits Consortium and Policy Manager at the MS Society, said: ‘The government’s decision to push ahead with this cynical attack on disability benefits will have a devastating impact on those on the lowest incomes.

‘It will deprive people with severe health problems of £390 a month and push more disabled people into poverty in the middle of a cost of living crisis.’

Since the pandemic put tens of thousands of Britons out of work, ministers have spent years trying to bring a flood of workers back to the job market.

So far, it’s been more like a trickle. While the rate of unemployment has decreased, the level of ‘economic inactivity’ has remained high.

The unemployment rate – people able to and are actively looking for work – was 4.2% in the three months to August this year, with no real change since July.

But there aren’t too many jobs to apply for right now. The estimated number of vacancies from August to October 2023 was 957,000 (it appeared Hunt rounded up to 1,000,000 in his address), according to the ONS.

Statisticians call people who aren’t actively looking for work or able to start a job ‘economically inactive’, a figure which has been high since the pandemic.

Some experts refer to this group as Britain’s ‘invisible workforce’, an untapped ‘army of unemployed people’ that need to be pushed back into the labour market.

In September, the rate was 20.9% (just shy of 8,800,000 Britons) and includes people living with long-term and temporary sickness, retirees, students, caregivers and those wealthy enough not to need to work.

‘The increase in economic inactivity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic had been largely driven by those who were students and the long-term sick,’ the ONS says.

The 2,604,000 unable to be on payrolls because of long-term sickness – think depression, problems with hands or feet and musculoskeletal conditions – are at a ‘record high’.

Those of ‘working age’ are defined as people aged between 16 and 64, but that doesn’t mean they can get a job, especially if they are full-time students or carers.

‘Discouraged workers’ – or, as the ONS puts it, people who believe there’s no work available – are only a small fraction of the economically inactive, consisting of 21,000.

Studies in Britain, Switzerland and Sweden have found that social security sanctions push people into worse jobs.

Just the threat alone of these sanctions brought lasting ill effects, with physical and mental ill health, hunger, homelessness and ‘survival crime’ among them.

Sanctions don’t always work either, researchers say. A University of Glasgow team found they tend to lead to increases in unemployment and economic inactivity as people are shoved into low-wage gigs.

Meanwhile, an American study found letting people hunt for jobs in their own time pays off – literally – as they can find a job more suited to them, boosting economic efficiency and productivity.

As Thomas Lawson, CEO of national anti-poverty charity Turn2u, said: ‘By pushing people into any job rather than the right job, emphasising the punishments they could receive and axing some people’s benefits completely, the government will further damage people’s trust and worsen their health.

‘We need a truly compassionate approach that centres understanding, dignity, and respect.’

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