Purnell Rejects Call to Delay Welfare Plan
Work and pensions secretary James Purnell has rejected calls for a delay to new measures to get the jobless into work or face benefit cuts.The welfare-to-work drive will see only full-time carers and disabled people with the greatest needs exempt from being expected to find work.
From next week, lone parents with a child of 12 or over who apply for income support will be put on to Jobseekers' Allowance and expected to look for work or face sanctions - including having their benefits cut by up to 40 per cent.
By 2010, the rule will be extended to lone parents with a youngest child aged seven or over.
The BBC reported that a senior government advisor has called for the measures to be delayed for two or three years.
Sir Richard Tilt, chairman of the Social Security Advisory Committee, said: "Benefit rates are relatively low and if you are going to reduce someone's benefit for a few weeks by 40 per cent you are pushing people much closer to poverty.
"Of course, the child will suffer, but it's not the child that has fallen foul of the system."
But Purnell, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, rejected the call for a delay.
"I disagree. I think it would be wrong, at a time when it may be harder for people to find work, to provide them with less help," he said.
"We know that our help works. We know that the help they get from the voluntary sector, from providers and from JobCentre Plus works, it changes people's lives.
"What we require people to do is come in and take up that help and when I talk to people about it they say: why didn't you make me do this earlier because it has changed my life."
Shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling agreed, saying: "It would be disastrous for Britain to do a U-turn on welfare reform.
"It would have the effect of making poverty worse and condemning millions of people in some of our most deprived communities to endless benefit dependency.
"Right now, when the jobs market is tough, we need real action to help people who've been on benefits for a long time to make the journey back into work and not simply assume that because unemployment is rising that there's no hope for them."
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