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helefra Forum-Blogger© Original500© Member  Let There Be Light
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Revolution hits benefits system. Jobless targeted with help to work Crack addicts to lose handouts. The long-term jobless will have to sign on every day in a radical shake-up of the benefits system. It is the centrepiece of reforms announced yesterday to get a million off benefits by 2015. In the blitz on payments, other claimants will have to do at least four weeks' voluntary work to stay on support. Incapacity benefits will be axed and treatment will be compulsory for crack and other drug addicts. Announcing the plans, Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said: "Life on benefits is not an option." Currently 4.5 million people rely on state help. Mr Purnell said the changes, in a Green Paper called No one Written Off, would end the days when people stayed on benefits for life. He told MPs: "Once they signed on, the welfare system all too often switched off. "This Green Paper ends all that. It will put us on the road to our ambition of an 80 per cent employment rate, eradication of child poverty by 2020 and equality for disabled people by 2025." Under the reforms, jobless claimants will have to overcome an escalating series of hurdles to get their handouts. After three months on the dole they will have to agree to a "back to work action plan". After a year they will have to do at least four weeks' voluntary work such as removing graffiti or gardening. And those out of work after two years will have to sign on daily and do full-time voluntary work. Private agencies will be used to get people back in a job and paid by results. To cut numbers on incapacity benefit, claimants will face a compulsory medical to check to see if they are fit to work. Those capable of working will be moved on to Jobseekers Allowance. The rest will be given more money - up from £86.35 to £102.10 - and access to training programmes. As the Mirror reported yesterday, there will be more help for families. Mums will be about £40 a week better off because they will be allowed to keep any cash given to them by ex-partners. Currently, single mums have benefits deducted if they get money. Mr Purnell vowed the plans would "transform lives". He explained: "It is based on the marriage of two simple ideas - more support and more responsibility, the root of a fair system for claimants and the taxpayer." But Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the disability charity Scope, had "deep concerns" about the reforms. He said: "Disabled people face a myriad of barriers in finding employment, including negative attitudes from employers and inadequate social care support. "Punitive measures against disabled claimants will do nothing to remove these barriers." A life on benefits is not an option.
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