Chris Grayling, Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, answers your questions.
Ewan Watt: Where does the government's Flexible New Deal fall short?
At the moment neither Pathways to Work nor the Flexible New Deal offer
a real alternative for the 2.6 million current claimants of Incapacity
Benefit. Almost all of the current claimants are excluded from the
Government's plans. Yet they are by far the biggest welfare challenge
we face, and we know that many of those claimants would like help to
get back into work. My view about Flexible New Deal is that it is
putting some foundation stones in the ground for us in implementing our
much more radical proposals. Its other big drawback is the length of
time it will take before it kicks in. Normally now people will wait a
year before being put onto a return-to-work programme and even then
what is on offer will be too limited. That's all much too long. But the
whole Government approach is much too tentative, and as such continues
to make relatively little difference.
Tony Makara: How do you intend to move the 1.65 million JSA claimants and the
700,000 expected to move from IB onto JSA into the 665,000 jobs that
are available at the better end of the economic cycle? Even if all the
vacancies are filled you will still be saddled with over a million
jobless. What can you do to help a million people find work?
No one pretends that this will happen overnight, but we do know
that between two and three million additional jobs have been created in
the UK in the past decade. The Government admits that the majority of
those jobs have gone to people coming in to this country from overseas.
I just think that it makes no sense to have people coming to the UK to
work while we have potentially three million or more people who could
be back in work. Of course we will not eliminate unemployment, but I
think we can and should do much better than we have over the past ten
years. That's the whole purpose of our welfare reform proposals. We
should improve the support available to help people back into work, but
be much tougher on those who are not doing their bit to get back into
work. So we will expect them to take part in comprehensive return to
work programmes and to accept reasonable job offers - and if they don't
they can't expect to carry on receiving out of work benefits.
Jennifer Wells: How can I help in Henley? I'm a full-time mother who can't travel to help you.
There are a number of ways in which you can help us. There are
others in your position, and we are keen to get everyone involved. Give
us a ring at the campaign office on 0845 230 4026 and we'll sort out
what will work for you.
Daniel Emmett-Gulliver: Which is more lamentable: a nation which leaves its children
behind, or a nation which refuses to repay the debt it owes to its
older generation?
Neither is great - and we will have to do a better job with both.
For our children, we need to stop looking at child poverty in such a
two dimensional way. Until we address the root causes of poverty, like
family breakdown and worklessness, we will never really tackle the
problem. For our pensioners, we need a simpler system of support for
pensioners on low incomes and to restore the earnings link so we can
move more pensioners out of means testing altogether.
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