Stop the Government's Attack on the Sick,
Lone Parents and Older People
submitted by Lancashire Association of Trade Union Councils (LATUC) 06/02/06

Please protest to your MP before the 21 April about what the Government is planning to do to welfare benefits. If you would like to join our campaign, email latuc@blackburnmail.com

Incapacity benefit

• New claimants - except the most severely disabled or those in the poorest health - will have to have "work-focused interviews", produce action plans and engage in "work-related activity"
  
• If they refuse to do this, their payment levels will be cut
  
• Specific conditions - such as blindness - will no longer automatically mean benefits are paid. Instead, the "severity" of the condition or the ability to work will be assessed.
  
• The mental health component of the assessment for benefits will be reviewed, in line with conditions "prevalent today".
  
• GPs to take "active steps to support" patients who want to return to work
  
• Employment advisers will be piloted in GP surgeries from next month
  
• A unit will be set up to make "periodic checks" of those claiming benefits, seeking updated medical advice if necessary
  

Lone parents

• Every three months interviews will be held with lone parents on benefits whose youngest child is at least 11 years old
  
• Those on benefits for at least a year will be seen every six months
  
• Pilot schemes will be introduced to give "more support" to lone parents in the first year of their claim, as people are still "adapting" at this stage
  

Older people

• People aged 50 to 59 will be required to take up additional job-seeking support available through the New Deal
  
• “Back-to-work” support for Jobseeker's Allowance claimants over age of 50 will be “improved”
  
• There will also be “face-to-face” guidance sessions

Housing benefit

• The system will be changed to give “better work incentives”

WHY YOU SHOULD OPPOSE THESE CHANGES

Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) - says that a lack of additional resources, the use of sanctions and the emergence of a divide between those who can and cannot work will undermine the system. "Instead of threatening sick and disabled people with benefit sanctions, the government should be concentrating its efforts on developing an effective retention strategy which would prevent people being pushed out of the labour market in the first place", DBC spokeswoman, Lorna Reith

Scope has issued its own, alternative green paper on incapacity benefit, and warns that disabled people risk being penalised if the government's proposals are implemented. Incapacity Benefit should not be means tested, Scope thinks, and there should be no obligation for people approaching retirement age to have to find work.

Mind is worried that people could be forced to return to work too soon - without proper support both in and out of the workplace. Mind believes that the threat of sanctions could put people with mental health conditions under increased and unnecessary pressure. "[People] need to be helped and supported, not goaded and ultimately forced to return to work before they are ready to do so", Mind Policy Director, Sophie Corlett.

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