Employers should not act as social service, say Tories

Paul Carter with the Conservatives in Birmingham

A Conservative government would press on with plans for welfare reform aimed at moving disabled people off benefit and into work, a Shadow cabinet member has told a fringe event.

Chris Grayling (pictured), shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, told the fringe event at the Conservative conference in Birmingham that service-providers would be employed at local level to get those on incapacity benefit and jobseeker’s allowance into employment.

The contractors would be paid on a performance-related basis, dependant on how many people they get into jobs.

Mr Grayling said: “The system that we will put in place will recognise the additional challenges that providers will have in working with people with incapacity disabilities.

“Effectively, therefore, we need to offer them a rate card, ranging from those who are relatively easy to place into employment, to those who are relatively complex.”

He also said there would be punitive measures, or sanctions, for those who did not take up offers of work.

Several delegates raised concerns that there were still barriers to disabled people from employers.

Mr Grayling replied: “I’d like employers to be enlightened in what they do, and I’d like employers to be much more ready to take on people with a disability and look at what people with a disability can do.”

But he denied that the onus should be on employers to remove barriers to disabled people.

“Ultimately, we can’t expect employers to act as a social service in all of this,” he said.

“We have to make sure that welfare to work delivers people who have got the right frame of mind, the right approach, and the right ideas about what they can do.”

Kate Green, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, was critical of the aggressive approach, and said she felt it would “only take us so far”.

She said: “The fact is that there are a lot of people now on incapacity benefit in particular, who are just not going to be ready for employment.

“People with learning difficulties, mental health problems, people with fluctuating health conditions, are extremely difficult for employers to manage in many cases, especially small and medium-sized employers.

“I think we’ve got to be realistic in just how much demand there is for the clients that we’re talking about.”