Government Proposes Changes to Benefit System

James Purnell, work and pensions secretary, has announced plans to force the unemployed to work for their benefits, under changes to the benefits system due to be announced today.

The Welfare Reform Green Paper proposes the abolition of Incapacity Benefit by 2013 and Income Support subsequently, replacing them will be a streamlined system of two benefit packages -- Employment Support Allowance for those with ailments which curtail their ability to work, and JobSeekers' Allowance for those who can be employed.

The proposals aim to achieve a record 80 percent employment rate, from the current 75 percent, and will apply to all 4.5 million people on out-of-work benefits.

Incapacity Benefits claimants will be subjected to medical tests to determine their capacity for employment with only full-time carers and the most disabled being exempted from finding work.

The report also targets drug addicts who would be expected to take up treatment or face a ban from receiving benefits.Single parents with children aged seven or more will similarly be expected to seek work.The paper also includes "work for benefit" programmes requiring those unemployed for more than two years to work in the community in return for state support.

Purnell called the reforms "revolutionary" and said it puts responsibility "right at the heart of the welfare state.....We will be using the benefits that we would have spent if people had stayed on the benefit... to get them back into health and back into work," he added.

Purnell said that the government wanted to get one million people off incapacity benefit by 2015.

Reacting to the plans Conservative leader David Cameron said: "What (Purnell) has done is very much taken the ideas we came up with in January, that are very clearly thought through and involve tough choices," he added.