Hain's high hopes for reforms

An imposing portrait of the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, stares down from the wall near Peter Hain’s
desk – a constant reminder of his roots as an apartheid campaigner in South Africa.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Mr Hain (pictured right) links his personal history as a freedom fighter to the struggle for the “rights of disabled people” today.

“I was brought up fighting for equality and against discrimination as a child in South Africa against the old apartheid system and then led the anti-apartheid movement here.” And he adds: “It is not just about ending discrimination, it is about opening up opportunity.” 

He also tells Disability Now that the government has pledged to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities before the end of 2008.

On to the main reason for the interview – the government’s plans for welfare reform and its pledge to get one million people off incapacity benefit (IB) over the next 10 years. The reform proposals have led to a slew of government-inspired headlines over the last two months slamming “sick-note Britain” and dubbing people on IB, many of whom are disabled, as “scroungers”.

Mr Hain is keen to distance himself from such talk: “There is nothing punitive about this. It is about opportunity, equal opportunities,” he says, adding that he wants to “introduce a radical transformation from passive to active benefits” so that people are no longer left “languishing on benefits”.

He points out that “there is an institutionalised pattern where people are casually signed off with a sick-note to get sickness benefit. If they go beyond the six months and find themselves sliding onto incapacity benefit…in the past they were just left there….and once you start that journey, we know if you are on IB for more than two years you will either die or retire on it.”

I ask him how he can reassure disabled people about the government’s intention. Some, after all, are so afraid that they have talked about “the state bully” and being “purged”.

He looks shocked.

“I don’t accept that description of what we are doing…we do expect people to take advantage of opportunities but that is not being coerced.”

However, he goes on to say that disabled people ought to “be afraid of what the Tories are planning”.

“What they are planning is quite frightening – the Wisconsin model, where people were not only forced into any old jobs, but landed up in a no-welfare, no-work box, dependent on charity,” he says. “Well, what motivates me as a Labour minister is to offer opportunities.” However, he does add, pointedly, that he “expects people to take those opportunities”.

He also promises that the employment support allowance, when the rate is announced, will be “slightly more generous than the long-term incapacity benefit rate” and that as the numbers of claimants come down, it will become “more generous still”.

Mr Hain reckons that the government will hit its target of reducing the numbers of IB claimants by a million by 2015, saying: “There are 680,000 job vacancies. The jobs are there and most disabled people want to work.” Whether Mr Hain, interviewed before it emerged that he had failed to declare over £100,000 in donations to his deputy leadership bid, will still be in post to hit that target is another question.